


Always the Falling

by ringtheory



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, M/M, Magical Realism, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24300043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ringtheory/pseuds/ringtheory
Summary: To bring back their kingdom’s lost prince, Felix and Sylvain decide to descend into hell and retrieve him. That they go together is their most critical mistake. Hell is not a common battlefield upon which there is strength in numbers. In hell, a companion is yet another blade that will be held to your neck. And it is not the sharpness of the edge that will eventually kill, it is the pressure of that edge against the throat which renders breath, blood, and being.Perhaps it is the case that Sylvain understands this when he enters. “You shouldn’t do this,” he says, without turning around. “Really, Felix. You should leave this to me.”But Felix crosses the boundary without hesitation. Immediately, the falling commences.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 10
Kudos: 60





	Always the Falling

To bring back their kingdom’s lost prince, Felix and Sylvain decide to descend into hell and retrieve him. That they go together is their most critical mistake. Hell is not a common battlefield upon which there is strength in numbers. In hell, a companion is yet another blade that will be held to your neck. And it is not the sharpness of the edge that will eventually kill, it is the pressure of that edge against the throat which renders breath, blood, and being.

Perhaps it is the case that Sylvain understands this when he enters. “You shouldn’t do this,” he says, without turning around. “Really, Felix. You should leave this to me.”

But Felix crosses the boundary without hesitation. Immediately, the falling commences. 

  
  
  


What is hell? If you understand its nature, then it is not impossible to find a way to leave hell after choosing to enter it of your own accord.

Sylvain is well-read. People forget this about him – or maybe he tries to make people forget this about him. In either case, it would be neither exaggeration nor flattery to state the following: Sylvain is more knowledgeable about literature and the fine arts than most. As with his taste for bed partners, he is undiscerning when it comes to these things. From high-brow opera to low-brow novellas, he absorbs them all with consideration and enthusiasm.

Hell features regularly in books and in theater. If before he saw hell with his own eyes he was asked what he thought hell is like, Sylvain would have artfully dodged and given the following answer: “Hell is most commonly depicted as an inferno, I think – a kind of realm of eternal, fiery punishment.” 

What he believes is the following: hell is a state of mind. It is a state of mind in which you are compelled to punish yourself. You are the torturer and you intimately punish the person you know best – yourself. Even if only subconsciously, you know your own fears and you know what you believe are sins worthy of retribution. In the state of hell, you will use these as weapons and thoroughly destroy yourself in a way such that you are forced to accept you deserve your own destruction. 

He is not far off from the truth. But he is not correct.

  
  
  


It is a moon for wolves when Felix arrives at House Gautier again. He goes to make a show of reinforcing the border to prevent Sreng from correctly realizing that the Kingdom of Faerghus is stretched too thin on all fronts to mount a proper defense against an invasion from the north. 

Sylvain measures the time since their crown prince’s death was announced in months and weeks. It shows in his face that Felix must measure it in days or hours or even minutes. His lips are dry and dark circles underneath his eyes. His complexion is pale. Though Felix looks deeply affected still, he also looks stronger than he has ever been. 

Felix’s arrival is accompanied without general fanfare. When Sylvain greets him, he tells Felix, “You look tired.”

“And you look unchanged,” Felix replies.

“I see you’ve gotten better at cutting words along with your usual weapon of choice,” Sylvain says, although he is not bothered by the implication nor does he believe Felix meant to actively hurt with his observation. 

Felix says, “I _am_ tired. What of it? If you realize that, then realize that I don’t have the mood or the time to deal with idle conversation.”

“But from what I’ve heard,” Sylvain replies, folding his arms, “you’ve been running all over Faerghus as of late. So from my point of view, you could redistribute some time from that effort.”

“That doesn’t change my mood,” Felix informs him.

“Fair enough. I know he has always been the one at the core of how you feel at any given point in time, and I didn’t expect that to change even now,” Sylvain says.

Sylvain is not being childish when he makes that comment. It is the truth and it is a pertinent observation. He has not implied anything about his own position in relation to the topic. Felix, understanding the situation, has little room to rebut. Therefore he remains silent. 

So Sylvain continues. “You’re coming dangerously close to becoming a hypocrite, Felix,” he says. It is his way of giving a reminder that there are others to whom Felix owes certain obligations.

“I would still die with you,” Felix says, tone approaching but not quite reaching petulant. “You know this. If it were with you, I would be willing to die. You _know_ that.”

“You’d die with me, but you wouldn’t die for me,” Sylvain replies, “the way you would… if it were for him.”

Felix turns his face away and asks, “Is that distinction truly important?”

“If the distinction were unimportant,” Sylvain replies, “then why do you suppose that we need both the words ‘for’ and ‘with’, instead of just one of the two?”

Felix doesn’t answer. Felix can’t answer. 

To Felix’s silence, Sylvain smiles in response. There is something watery about the expression; it is opaque and shapeless. One could reflect any sort of intention against its surface. Felix understands this is how Sylvain ensnares. A combination of wealth, title, and crest is not alone sufficient to ply people over the way that Sylvain does; if it were, then they would flock not to Sylvain but to Felix, who is of superior standing, bloodline, and restraint. That this does not occur is because Felix is before anybody and everybody the same Felix Hugo Fraldarius while the Sylvain Jose Gautier who stands before you is yours and yours alone.

The depth that lies underneath that smile is not easily visible. Not even to Felix shall it be revealed.

  
  
  


The falling continues until Felix’s back hits the bottom of the well and the impact forcibly expels all the air from his lungs. Inhaling again is painful not only because of how hard the fall was but also because of how frigid the air is.

Before long, his body is cold – his lips go numb, then the rest of his extremities. Felix uses his teeth to take his gloves off, then uses his bare hands to massage warmth back into his own body. He rubs himself all over and over everything to stave off the cold but where he touches goes excruciatingly hot if his hands remain there for too long. It would be less painful to allow himself to freeze to death but Felix cannot seize his instincts, so he cycles through heating himself up and letting his body go cold. 

He can move no more than his hands. Felix remains lying down at the very bottom of the well, staring up at the twilit sky far above. In the throes of pain and through the lens that the shape of the well’s opening provides, Felix realizes he can see the entire world in the shape of that imperfect circle – perhaps even the entire universe – not merely with his eyes but with his entire body and consciousness. He begins to understand something profound and unspeakable. It is a primal knowledge that exists still in our bones and flesh, but that cannot be processed by the brain because it is too overwhelming to be comprehended. The revelation does something to his mind that is almost exactly analogous to what is happening to his body: sheer overstimulation. 

This builds until he reaches a climax of sensation both internal and external. Felix stops seeing and feeling entirely. The breath in his throat goes stale. His body convulses and then his body stills. Strangely, he does retain the ability to smell and taste. There is a peculiar scent all around – because one normally tunes out their own unique smell, it takes him some time to realize that the scent is his own.

After an indefinite period of time, a voice calls from above him.

“Felix?” Sylvain says. 

In response to his name, Felix opens his eyes. He’d thought Sylvain would be further away – then Felix realizes he is no longer at the bottom of the well. Sylvain’s face is so close to his. There is tentative comfort in the lack of distance.

Sylvain asks, “Did something happen?”

“Something happened,” Felix replies. He frowns and stands. The strength in his body is back. His senses are working as they normally do. Yet there is certainly something different.

Felix glances over at the well. He walks towards it cautiously and places his hands upon the stone opening. Carefully he peers into the well and as he looks into the depths, he understands what is different: there is a part of him at the bottom of that well. Within him now is nothing where once there was something. 

Though he wishes he didn’t, Felix knows what it is he has left down there. It would have been better to not realize. But this is the nature of hell.

He glances briefly at Sylvain. Sylvain looks back with measured concern in his eyes.

“No, never mind. Nothing happened,” Felix says. “Let’s continue.”

  
  
  


When they were still students, Sylvain often brought people to his room. Those stone walls carried sound too well; as a small courtesy, Sylvain would close his windows whenever he had company. Felix heard anyway, but the truth is that he was not as bothered by these things as people imagined he was. The voices were muffled enough to be indistinct so long as Felix didn’t concentrate on them. Felix could ignore what he didn’t care to listen to and went about his own business.

But there were times when Sylvain’s voice carried clearly into Felix’s room. Those were the nights that Sylvain would visit the room next to his. Sylvain didn’t close the windows on those nights – sometimes, Felix would open his and listen to their voices. 

On just one of those nights, Felix had leaned out the window slightly and stared out into the night sky. The breeze carried their voices away from Felix’s ears and Felix’s sigh into theirs. Out of the corner of his eyes, Felix had seen Sylvain open the window. He couldn’t tell if Sylvain had seen him. But Felix had an intuition that Sylvain had chosen to ignore him.

Maybe one or both of them had wanted to be seen by the other.

  
  
  


When Sylvain comes to, he is no longer in control of his body; he has entered somebody else’s. At first, this is disconcerting – but then he comes to feel that the experience is almost as if reading a book with first-person narration. This acceptance comes because he recognizes who _is_ in control.

He wears the academy’s summer uniform. When he goes to the training grounds, he picks up not a lance but a sword. When he is called for, the name he responds to is _Glenn._

Felix and Sylvain share the unusual circumstance of being younger brothers who implicitly outranked their older brothers. Additionally, they share the unfortunate circumstance of having outlived their brothers. Beyond these observations, their relationships with and personal narratives regarding their older brothers diverge significantly. Felix retains a fondness and appreciation for the concept of an older brother. Sylvain, on the other hand, felt a piercing sort of dread when his father told him not three days after Miklan’s disinheritance the following: “Among the nobles in His Highness’s peerage, you’re the only one older than him, so comport yourself accordingly.”

He understood what his father meant. To his father, it would have been ideal if Sylvain could have been like Glenn. 

Because of this, Sylvain forgets for some time that he has also been falling through hell. To have others treat him as Glenn and to be able to respond as if he is Glenn is to Sylvain the polar opposite of suffering. The only peculiarity he encounters is that there is still a Sylvain in this strange narrative, who behaves as Sylvain really would behave, autonomous of the Sylvain observing from Glenn’s point of view. 

They eat dinner together and it seems like a natural occurrence. In reality, Sylvain had never been particularly close to Glenn – if anything, Sylvain had avoided Glenn whenever possible. But Sylvain-as-Glenn and Sylvain-as-Sylvain sustain a natural, easygoing sense of rapport. “I begin to think you _enjoy_ your reputation of indecency,” Sylvain-as-Glenn says.

“I’ve only indecent role models to look up to,” Sylvain-as-Sylvain replies. He laughs and continues: “Maybe if you’d been my older brother, I wouldn’t be like this. What do you think?”

It is the first time that Glenn fails to respond immediately. He instead changes the topic. Neither iteration of Sylvain makes anything of this. Sylvain continues to act as a silent onlooker while Glenn goes about the rest of his day, taking care of his weapons maintenance by himself before returning to his dorm room. The air is stale in there when he enters, so he goes to open the window.

Sylvain catches a glimpse of his reflection in the window. The face half-reflected in the glass isn’t Glenn’s. It is Felix’s. And then Sylvain remembers that this is – without a doubt – it is hell.

  
  
  


The next time they meet in person, it is during the fertile season. Just a week prior, Arianrhod was lost. Each leading battalions from their respective houses, they join at the western front – not to repel the Empire but to prevent further insurrection. This time, Felix’s health is visibly improved but his hair has been cut shorter. They hold the city closest to Lake Teutates; it is nestled in the mountains, so Arianrhod is visible in the distance on days without fog and unclouded nights.

“The Silver Maiden is a lover unattainable even by me, I suppose,” Sylvain says one evening.

“Maybe,” Felix replies pointedly, “that’s a comment you should have made only under different circumstances.”

Sylvain tilts his head languidly. A bead of sweat runs down the back of his neck. “No talk of unattainable lovers, then,” he says. “But that goes for us both. Alright?”

That doesn’t stop either of them from bringing him up, although it is for different reasons between the two of them. Sylvain knows these circumstances. Felix knows that Sylvain knows them too.

“You never call him by his name,” Felix says.

Sylvain replies, “That’s a bit much, coming from you.”

“I’m not criticizing you,” Felix says. “It only occurred to me just now… that I can’t remember the last time you said his name.” 

“And that epiphany caught you off guard?” Sylvain asks.

Felix’s silence answers the question. They also fail to call him by his name for different reasons between the two of them. Sylvain understands these circumstances. Felix understands that Sylvain understands them too.

Sylvain looks up and smiles at the ceiling. “Boar prince,” he says out loud. 

He can feel Felix’s eyes on him anyway. He can sense Felix closing the space between them. He can hear the words forming on Felix’s lips before Felix speaks them.

Sylvain remembers spectating the way that Felix had looked at him and the way he looked at Felix in turn. There was something in those gazes that Sylvain was fascinated by. It was nothing like the novellas he’s read or the operas he’s sat through. If it were a story meant to touch and entertain others, then they would never have looked at each other the way that they did. Perhaps instead the author would make Felix quietly wrought by the fact that Glenn was lost for him, a brother for a prince – because it would be more believable to insert uncertainty into his emotions. But neither of their gazes ever wavered even though their eyes never met. There was a purity in the way they regarded each other that bordered upon the unreal. 

The way Felix looks at Sylvain is not like that – it does not have that veneer of unattainability. It is present in reality. It asks to be returned.

So Sylvain meets Felix’s eyes.

“Your Highness,” Felix says.

  
  
  


What is hell?

Say that Felix and Sylvain enter hell together. And in exchange for one of them, their kingdom’s lost prince will be returned – but only if the two of them choose unanimously who will be forsaken. They would both prefer to self-sacrifice but would also understand that this is not at a tenable equilibrium. One of them must tear their wayward prince out of the other’s body. It would be the natural extrapolation of the fact that they have been trying to find him in each other for months.

“Felix,” Sylvain would say, “I don’t think I can sacrifice myself for His Highness. It isn’t possible for me. That’s why… I’m going to pick you.”

“You’re trying to trick me, aren’t you?” Felix would ask immediately.

Sylvain would smile and say, “Of course I am. The real question is… how far does this trick go?”

How many layers deep would that trick be? How much deeper must they fall?

As they fall, the Millennium Festival approaches.


End file.
